When I took interest in StyleCop with Version 4.2 in 2008, the tool was heavily criticized on the Internet. These reactions had their roots in the following points:
The tool was not open source
The rules implemented were arbitrary rules set by Microsoft and were not to the liking of some people
They were not related in any way to how the .Net runtime interpreted our code
Some tools previously made by Microsoft were in direct contradiction with the rules laid down for StyleCop
If we look today, all the rules of that time continue to be present and StyleCop has finally been widely accepted. Some of this acceptance is certainly due to the fact Microsoft released the sources of StyleCop to the community with Version 4.3.3, but this is not the only reason.
If we look at how we begin development on medium-sized and large projects, one of the first things we do is establish base principles, and included among them is the definition of coding conventions. These rules, stating how our code must look, are here in order to improve readability and maintainability for all developers of the team. The choices made there are fairly arbitrary and depend on the background and preferences of the person (or the development team) who laid them down.
However, after the project begins, it takes a lot of time and code reviews to follow them.
This is where StyleCop becomes handy. Whether the rules laid down comply with the Microsoft set of rule or the team has to make its own from scratch, the tool, once parameterized, can review the code of the project on command or can even be used in continuous integration to enforce the set of rules previously defined.
Installing StyleCop with Visual Studio (Simple) describes the installation process of StyleCop, and teaches how to configure the rules to be executed on a project and how to launch an analysis from Visual Studio.
Understanding the ReSharper add-in (Simple) describes the StyleCop addin for ReSharper. We will see its real time analysis and how to easily fix most of the StyleCop violations.
Automating StyleCop using MSBuild (Simple) describes how to automate our build process using MSBuild. We will describe which lines need to be added to the MSBuild project in order to enable StyleCop's analysis of it and how to cap the number of violations encountered before the build broke.
Automating StyleCop using command-line batch (Simple) describes how to analyze your projects with StyleCop from the command line. For this, we will use a tool named StyleCopCmd, and prepare it to be able to launch the last version of StyleCop.
Automating StyleCop using NAnt (Intermediate) describes how to use StyleCopCmd to automate our process using NAnt.
Integrating StyleCop analysis results in Jenkins/Hudson (Intermediate) describes how to build a StyleCop analysis job for a project and display its errors.
Customizing file headers (Simple) describes how to customize file headers to avoid StyleCop violations, and how we can use Visual Studio templates and snippets to make our life easier while developing.
Creating custom rules (Intermediate) describes how to create our own custom rule for the StyleCop engine. We will also see how to add parameters to this rule.
Integrating StyleCop in your own tool (Advanced) will show us how to embed StyleCop with your own tools. As an example, we will create a real-time analysis add-in for MonoDevelop/Xamarin Studio.
StyleCop is a C# code analyzer; it can be used with Visual Studio or without it.
This book covers the use of StyleCop with and without Visual Studio. In order to follow the different chapters of this book, you will need the following software installed:
Visual Studio 2008 professional or superior
Jenkins
Xamarin Studio or MonoDevelop 4.0
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "it is also possible to include the Stylecop.targets file."
A block of code is set as follows:
<Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">
Debug
</Configuration>
<Platform Condition=" '$(Platform)' == '' ">
AnyCPU
</Platform>
<ProductVersion>8.0.50727</ProductVersion>
<SchemaVersion>2.0</SchemaVersion>When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Project DefaultTargets="StyleCop" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<UsingTask TaskName="StyleCopTask" AssemblyFile="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\..\StyleCop 4.7\StyleCop.dll" />
<PropertyGroup>
<!-- Set a default value of 1000000 as maximum Stylecop violations found -->Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
NAnt 0.92 (Build 0.92.4543.0; release; 09/06/2012) Copyright (C) 2001-2012 Gerry Shaw http://nant.sourceforge.net
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
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